The Canticle of Demons
by tjadis
Summary: A dissonant verse.  "You do not understand us, mortals./Listen./We will sing of what is."


[This is only a partial book; the binding has been split down the center, and only the first few pages remain. It was probably always a slim tome, written in a Templar's copperplate hand and bound in dark leather.

There is no indication of provenance or author. Merely the title on the first page.]

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><p><em>THE CANTICLE OF DEMONS<em>

_one: of the thief_

In the Golden City Undying we were  
>beautiful and triumphant, the First Children<br>of a kind Maker. We, the ever-living!

Then the mortals came, and brought  
>with them death and sorrow beyond care's lonely count;<br>a thief in the very heart of the Fade.  
>In that moment we knew the sting<br>of endings unkind and unwanted—

we who were beautiful were changéd,  
>cursed to yearn and hunger for<br>meat that brings no satisfaction,  
>love that burns false within us,<br>life but a shambling shadow of what came before.

For one of our number had been stolen  
>and whipped with thornéd branches we were driven to seek,<br>to find. To find  
>the Voice, the song, the last-sounded notes<br>of our world, the echoes of what has been,  
>what will be,<br>what must never come to pass.

You do not understand us, mortals.  
>Listen.<br>We will sing of what is.

* * *

><p><em>two: of the Voice<em>

My daughter was a thousand-petaled rose,  
>a wheel with spoked hands! A rain<br>of music, shimmering gold in the eternal  
>light and darkness of our world.<br>She cleaved to my body, oh! in those days  
>before sorrow, before grief.<p>

In those days before grief, my daughter was my delight,  
>as all daughters are to grateful mothers.<br>Spirit of my spirit, substance of my form,  
>human-named Elpis, Hope, the Last and Most Formidable!<br>Oh my mountain-born daughter,  
>your hands bringing the sky into being!<br>Oh my thousand-petaled daughter,  
>a thousand thousand songs nestled within your stamens!<p>

Together we built  
>a city of gold, shining fountains, graceful walls,<br>oh the gardens, with flowers ever blooming!  
>We allowed neither death nor darkness<br>to shadow the lintels of this place, our place,  
>a jewel in the shifting setting of our world!<p>

Oh my daughter, your back was curved like a roofline,  
>your bones were pillars holding up the sky!<p>

In the time before sorrow we were joyful,  
>our songs were sweet and welcoming.<br>We knew not hunger, for we feasted in gardens.  
>We knew not grief, for we were ever-living.<br>We knew love, only love, only love!

Oh, my daughter.  
>Oh, my thousand-petaled daughter.<br>Oh, my mountain-born daughter.

My every breath sings of your absence.

* * *

><p><em>three: of the mortal world<em>

The dreamers slip into our world each night,  
>thieves who reshape the world around them, steal<br>the shapes we have so painstakingly built.

Now, with our Golden City cracked,  
>our anchor is cut free. Nothing we have<br>built can stand. Nothing.

But the dreamers, the thieves, they come in,  
>and show us the way to their world.<br>We follow. Take on their passions,  
>their sorrows, wait and watch at the Veil.<p>

Mortals, you are the Second Children of a Maker  
>neglectful as a cuckoo. We watched over you,<br>welcomed you in! And now, when we burn  
>with your hungers, you decry us, name us <em>demon<em>.

Mortals, it is you who have changed us.  
>Mortals, we are the children of your sins,<br>the sons and daughters of your virtues.

You name us Hunger and Pride, Rage and Desire,  
>Justice and Faith, Silence and Caution.<br>Those are not our names, not even our natures.  
>They are what we have eaten.<br>In the waters of the Fade ever-shifting, we become  
>and become again! But the mortal world<br>is a chain unbroken, water freezing to ice,  
>maddening us with desire for its unceasing <em>I am<em>.

In the mortal world, a blind root may split a boulder  
>and the tree may tumble into a ravine, victim<br>of its own becoming, its own error.  
>The mortal world becomes, and becomes.<br>But it becomes decay, it becomes dust,  
>it grinds down to a slow halt under the weight of its birth—<p>

Mortals, can you hear the wheels of your world halting?  
>Mortals, do you understand that our fate is yours?<p>

You do not comprehend what we were and are.  
>You name us <em>demon<em> and in that word dismiss us.

Our Voice remains in your world still,  
>trapped by its becoming.<br>We seek her out.  
>We will find her.<p>

We will find her, or both of our worlds are lost.

* * *

><p><em>four: of the Black City<em>

In the days after the city was broken,  
>we wandered heart-sick and longing, troubled<br>by a thousand nameless hungers.  
>Fetched up at the gates of the blackened city,<br>we gathered and wailed, _oh the silence!_  
><em>Oh the hunger! Where are your songs now?<em>  
><em>Your fountains are dusty, your gardens withered!<em>

And the city, burned and dimmed with smoke  
>screamed a reply:<p>

_I have no Voice, no sustenance!  
>My Maker is departed, the mortals<br>who tread my streets mere shades!_

_I am a pit-black place where all kindness fails.  
>I am a yawing hunger that admits no sweetness.<br>I am That Which Devours.  
>I am sere, sooty, terrible in my anger.<br>Surely I will shatter, crumble,  
>nibbled into nothingness by the relentless<br>waters of this world!  
>Surely I will end!<em>

We sang,  
><em>You cannot end!<em>  
><em>You are the Golden City Blackened,<em>  
><em>you are the pulsing heart of this world.<em>  
><em>Without you, the waters will rise<em>  
><em>and shred us! We the abandoned eldest children,<em>  
><em>who live among the soul-spired canvas<em>  
><em>of our world! If you end, so do we!<em>

But there was no answer;  
>only howling, empty and dry.<br>We are cracked at our center, we bleed,  
>we die, mortals, we who are deathless—<p>

We fail and fall forever, dying without ever reaching death.  
>Our Maker has turned his face from us.<p>

We end without ending.

* * *

><p><em>five: of the Twisted<em>

In the time after our world broke like an egg,  
>those who were no longer mortal and yet not of us waited.<br>Wanting. The hunger burned in them, scorching claws  
>within them! <em>Home<em>, they cried. _Home._

Then Moros, human-named Despair, came to them  
>and whispered:<br>_My daughter, she too is misplaced._  
><em>This thing that has broken us, trapped you here,<em>  
><em>put it right and you will be—<em>  
><em>released—<em>

Remember, mortals, that among all of us Despair is the most truthful.  
>Remember, too, that truth is not one thing but many,<br>a ragged wood with many paths,  
>a jewel with a thousand facets.<p>

But when Despair speaks, do not all mortals listen?  
>When she who bends the soulspires with her presence<br>and stirs waters where she steps calls, do not all mortals answer?

They spoke in the tongues of mortal flame, and created  
>those they called Listeners, a thousand thousand hearts beating<br>with a single purpose: to find Elpis, mortal-named Hope,  
>the Voice that bound our world's heart together,<br>mountain-born Elpis who drank the floodwaters down.  
>Listeners went tumbling through the Veil, mortal and demon and hunger,<br>claws and bone and magic—

Oh, if it were only so!  
>If only they had not been bound in the hunger of the mortals,<br>if only those trapped had not tumbled screaming through the Veil!

The moment that those created creatures touched the mortal world,  
>they were lost—for the Old Gods sang in a voice too like our Elpis,<br>for they were her creatures and hers alone, her comfort in hours lonely.

And the Listeners were made Twisted by the mortal world,  
>by the mad song of the favorites of Hope, her dragons, her lovers.<br>Bound to their call, to their song, they cannot hear her!  
>They find her creatures, but not their Voice!<p>

Our grief is a great bell tolling, mortals,  
>for the pure arrows of the Unwilling<br>have become tainted, and twist all they touch:

For when Despair speaks, all mortals listen.

* * *

><p><em>six: of the Harrowed<em>

Let us speak now of your children, mortals.

We see them, each trembling and knock-kneed,  
>raising their wavering power against those they have found themselves<br>caged unto. We see them, and we pity them.

For they die, those shivering children,  
>those children you dash against the rocks unwilling,<br>those tender children, those sweet children,  
>those children who open gently to our searching hands.<p>

For they die, those toothsome children,  
>and it is with us they stay. They cry within the dry stone,<br>they rise with the floodwaters and press their hands  
>against the Veil.<p>

We hear their hearts beating still, submerged, drowning.  
>If we had sons and daughters as you mortals do,<br>would we treat them with such cruelty?  
>For they stay here, screaming, unable to pass<br>to wherever it is you mortals pass to, what very little of you survives  
>when your bodies fail—<p>

We cradle them in our bodies, these delicious children.  
>We have pity, unlike you.<p>

* * *

><p>.<p>

_[The book ends here, with a torn binding and a blank page that is stained with what might be blood. There is a note in the margin of the last page, written in a different hand that says: _We have found Hope. And she is terrible.]

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><p>.<p>

Author's Note: These are the canticle stanzas I wrote for Old Roads: Pitiless Games and used as epigraphs for each chapter. I thought some folks might like to read the whole thing in order, so I went ahead and posted it.


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